


My Witness Told To Me

by somnolentblue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-25
Updated: 2010-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-14 02:49:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somnolentblue/pseuds/somnolentblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henriksen investigates the aftermath of Tall Tales.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Witness Told To Me

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to too_rational for proof-reading. Warning notes are at the end of the fic.

**A missing janitor guy**

Henriksen flipped through John Doe's file. He suspected the Winchesters' hand in the janitor's disappearance; they had been seen poking about, asking questions and haunting Crawford Hall, where the missing man worked.

(Henriksen quashed his unease that the man's name had been _John Doe_. There was a man, he worked as a janitor in Crawford Hall, and he had indubitably disappeared while the Winchesters were in town. That he was improbably named was not the point.)

 **Two suicides**

Henriksen wasn't sure that Cox's death fit into the puzzle, but it seemed awfully circumstantial and true to the Winchesters' pattern. They seemed to be vigilantes of some sort, in a twisted, sociopathic way, and Doe's proximity might have been enough for them to play judge, jury, and executioner in the name of the dead professor.

(Henriksen dismissed rumors of Crawford Hall being haunted and worried mutters about history repeating itself; everyone knew that ghosts didn't exist, and a poor girl's suicide years ago had no bearing on this case.)

 **Three old affairs**

The more he uncovered about Cox, the less he mourned the man's death. His wife was ignorant, and Henriksen didn't want to speak ill of the dead to her; however, rumors swirled around campus about Cox trading sex for grades and harassing female students. There had been three complaints brought, but his status as a named chair with lucrative grants and book contracts ensured that they were quickly swept under the table.

(Henriksen began to wonder if the Winchesters had a hand in Cox's death; the rumors of a zombie - some said a ghost - escorting Cox to that fateful fall were consistent with their bizarre methods of obfuscation and con tactics. That weird case out in California had overtones of wronged women - maybe they were avenging their dead mother?)

 **Four missing rooms**

Henriksen read Doe's statement in the police report and then sighed at the shoddy work. Crawford had four floors, not six, meaning it was impossible for Doe to have stated that Cox fell from his office, room 669. Honestly, didn't anyone pay attention these days?

(The local cops were obviously all under a mass delusion, given that every single person who worked on the case swore up, down, and sideways that they had gone to 669 to investigate the crime scene and had cordoned off all four rooms at that end of the hall. Detective Devereaux had seemed quite befuddled when they walked up the stairs to the fourth floor and could go no further; Henriksen's initial respect for her - she was calm, well-organized, and had a delightfully dry sense of humor, which he suspected was invaluable in a college town - dived at that moment.)

 **Five aliens**

He tossed his keys on the bedside table, toed his shoes off, and then sprawled out on the bed, wishing that his head would quit pounding. This investigation had just taken a sharp turn into Mulder-territory, which was even worse that its normal Friday the 13th-land.

(He didn't even want to think about what his official notes were going to look like. He didn't have to come to any sort of resolution on the case itself since he was here in pursuit of the Winchesters and not as part of an official investigation. Still, anything he wrote down was going to end up in his case files, which meant that other people would see it, and he didn't want to be relegated to the basement and the crazies for the rest of his life.)

 **Six lights a-shining**

Henriksen suspected, although he couldn't prove, that the lights and the music were somehow connected to the boy's altered memories. He'd emailed his contacts who knew more about psychiatry than he did in the hopes that one of them would have an insight, but, in the meantime, he was lost.

(The thought of the Winchesters being able to alter memories like this was disquieting, but it did explain the wilder stories that previous witnesses had come up with before clamming up. It would also explain why most people he wanted to interview were so reluctant to talk to him, why they always tried to exculpate the brothers and cast them as the heroes of the tale.)

 **Seven probes a-probing**

He'd sought out the local rape crisis center and then tried, subtly, to point Curtis in its direction. However, he doubted that the boy would ever make the trip.

(He didn't like to think about what sick, malicious fucks the Winchesters had to be to do this, or why they would have derived any amusement from it.)

 **Eight guys a-grinning**

Henriksen methodically interviewed frat brothers and classmates. Once again, he discovered that the Winchesters had gotten there first. He wondered if they were gloating at the success of their actions or simply checking to make sure that their techniques were working.

(The worst part about interviewing Curtis and his peers was the sheer schadenfraude on too many faces and in too many voices. Didn't any of the stupid children understand what was going on? That they'd had sociopathic killers in their midst, and that they'd cheerfully nestled those snakes to their bosoms, talking with them and drinking with them? That their peer (not friend, definitely not friend) was traumatized and lucky that he wasn't dead with the other poor bastards? That horrible things were probably happening to an employee of their university as they played their drinking games and popped their zits? Sometimes Henriksen hated people.)

 **Nine gators grabbing**

He was still in Mulder-territory, but at least this was straight-up violence and gore. He'd taken a tour of the research labs, and he could understand why they'd chosen death by creature as a fitting retribution for Dr.Palant.

(He could not understand _how_ they'd done so, or why. Surely it made more sense to sic PETA on the lab and its researchers, ruining them and ensuring their professional humiliation, than to concoct a scheme dependent upon so many dicey variables. Hell, if he called Gina, he was sure that she'd be able to come up with ten ways to correct the lab's errors and censure its researchers within ten minutes.)

 **Ten sods a-screaming**

Most of the Animal Behavior Lab's fellows and postdocs had gotten off with light to moderate scarring. Dr. Smith had lost a few of her toes, where she had been grabbed before thwacking the whatever-it-was on the head with her book-heavy bag and running away, but that was the most extreme injury. Only Cameron, the TA who was gathering evidence to officially alert the university, had been spared.

(How they had known enough about the internal politics of the ABL to spare the innocuous TA and punish the lead grant writer was beyond him. Sometimes, when he was exhausted and on the edge of sleep, he wondered if they had psychic powers. However, the most likely explanation was simply that people looked at their friendly, attractive, white boy faces and ran their mouths excessively.)

 **Eleven ladies laughing**

He ordered a beer in the bar and shook off the uneasy feeling of being watched. He'd managed to book a flight home for the next day, but, in the meantime, he just wanted to unwind and enjoy the game while surrounded by the soft sussuration of people enjoying themselves. He wished that the sorority girls playing a drinking game next to him would move down the bar a bit, but he'd live.

(Unlike Cox and Palant and, probably, Doe. He was so tired of the hum of halogen lights and the sharp shininess of the morgue. This dive, with peanut shells on the floor and questionable hygiene, was the perfect antidote to the sterility that came when venturing into the coroner's realm.)

 **Twelve candies crunching**

It was unlikely that anyone would ever find Doe alive - although Henriksen wasn't ruling out a discovery several months down the line, with salt or sulfur or silver involved in bizarre ways - but he'd certainly found enough candy wrappers. Pixie Stix and Tootsie Roll Pops, Snickers and Milky Ways - they showered out of his case _every single day_. Honestly, it was the one freakish straw too many for him at the moment.

(Luckily, they had never included Cadbury's amongst their number, or the massive bar in Gina's stocking would meet an unfortunate end. Smiling at the thought of his wife and her chocolate addiction, he boarded the plane and anticipated his homecoming.)

 **Twelve Days of Interviews**

Gabriel contemplated Henriksen and decided that the man needed to lighten up. A little bit of music to go with the season would be the perfect thing to brighten his existence! Humming, Gabriel snapped his fingers to implant the suggestion in Henriksen's mind. He quickly tweaked all of the radio stations so that everywhere the man went today would be playing the same melody and then transported himself to the NBC sets to see if they would offer him any good ideas today.

On the twelfth interview  
My witness told to me  
Twelve candies crunching  
Eleven ladies laughing  
Ten sods a-screaming  
Nine gators grabbing  
Eight guys a-grinning  
Seven probes a-probing  
Six lights a-shining  
Five aliens  
Four missing rooms  
Three old affairs  
Two suicides  
And a missing janitor guy

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: There's nothing in this fic that is not in or implied by the episode Tall Tales. Violence, death, sexual assault.


End file.
